A classic example of this strained relationship occurred during the enemy's Tet Offensive in Vietnam in 1968, when Secretary of State Dean Rusk replied to a reporter's question with an angry snarl: "Whose side are you on?" That tension, brought on by those in the administration and the military who perceive the press as a propaganda arm of the government, has been heightened in the passions inflamed by the horrendous September 11 attacks.In their wake we are being subjected to a renewed assault on our right to dissent, which always serves as a moderating force in our democracy but becomes an essential bulwark against extremism in times of crisis. Witness the laws that don't distinguish between dangerous "news leaks" that imperil our security and those that provide important information to the public that the government wants to suppress.

    Other ominous warnings abound. It may have been only an unfortunate accident that President Bush chose to call for a "crusade" against the fundamentalists of Islam, a word that stirs memories of centuries of crusades to drive Islam out of Jerusalem. He withdrew that ill-conceived characterization but then uttered the chilling words that "either you are with us or you are with the terrorists." The faulty logic of this simplistic generalization, whatever it was intended to convey, can be read to mean that criticism of government policies, no matter how constructive, will be regarded as unpatriotic.

    Then, so there would be no misunderstanding of the administration's intentions, Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a warning "to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty." His message was this: "Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends."

    U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson, notably breaking the tradition that those in his position do not engage in political activities, joined Attorney General Ashcroft to testify in favor of a proposed antiterrorism bill so broad that it would permit indefinite detention of persons defined by a government agency as "terrorists." That the United States Senate voted to stand firm against that preposterous demand—and also inserted a sunset provision so that portions of the law die in four years--was only mildly reassuring. Transparently revealed was a bureaucratic mindset that sees nothing wrong with the totalitarian concept that the state may imprison someone indefinitely without charges and subject "terror suspects" to Star Chamber trials.

    Look at what is tolerated in the hastily passed "U.S.A. PATRIOT Act"—an adolescent acronym for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism." It contains language modeled on the laws of Nazi Germany. This civil libertarian's nightmare threatens American citizens who have committed no criminal act, invades our cherished privacy, increases the search and seizure powers of law enforcement agencies and opens the door for the Central Intelligence Agency to create files on Americans while engaging for the first time—legally—in domestic surveillance.

   To comfort us, the feds promised not to read our mail if we are not a suspect, even though they can. They insist, in the words of a White House official, that "a new reality" has replaced the old rules of law enforcement. In darker days that lie ahead, this law will serve as a blunt instrument in the hands of those who actively desire the powers of a police state.

    Shortly after September 11, President Bush signed an intelligence "finding" that directed the CIA to engage in the most high-risk covert actions since the agency was founded in 1947. He also added more than one billion dollars to the CIA's budget in what one high administration spokesman candidly termed a "green light" to undertake "lethal operations that were unthinkable pre-September 11."

    President Bush's directive reportedly gave "the highest possible priority" to assassinate foreign political leaders, thereby reversing executive orders signed by Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton that banned the CIA and all other government agencies from involvement in political assassinations. This unprecedented action sets the United States on a path of political assassinations similar to that pursued by Israeli right-wing religious fanatics. The blowback from that policy led to the assassination of one of their own cabinet members by Palestinian extremists. The president's "finding" was made even more disconcerting by the subsequent warning of Vice President Cheney, who served as secretay of defense under Bush's father in the Persian Gulf War of 1991, that the current war is different "in the sense that it may never end—at least, not in our lifetime."

   All that in 2001, the first year of the George W. Bush administration. George Orwell's "1984" missed by only seventeen years. 

    Limitations on others' individual freedoms come easily to the high-level members of the Bush administration. Almost without exception they have come from high levels of a corporate culture that has demonstrated a marked disdain for democratic values, a proclivity to engage in illegal activities and a penchant for avarice and deceit unequalled by the robber barons of the past. Even Wall Street, that bastion of corruption, professes to be shocked by the unparalleled criminal activities of Enron, a corporation linked to the highest levels of the current administration.

    Shortly after the inauguration, the White House arrogantly pushed through a tax cut almost exclusively for the benefit of corporations and the wealthy. After erasing the budget surplus they inherited, they dare to propose another similar tax cut for the rich while millions of Americans have lost their jobs in the unfolding recession.

    Ashcroft was booted from his office in the United States Senate by the voters of Missouri in the last election—losing to a dead Democrat. He has been assigned the role of point man of the campaign to jettison the Bill of Rights and promote the agenda of America's religious extremists. He has used the draconian federal drug laws to threaten withdrawal of the licenses of Oregon physicians who prescribe federally controlled drugs for terminally ill patients under terms of that state's "Death With Dignity Act." The voters of Oregon had insisted on passing that law not once, but twice—by a margin of 31,000 votes in 1994 and, after a challenge, by a margin of 220,000 votes in 1997.

    In addition to tormenting those who wish to die in peace in Oregon, Ashcroft unleashed federal DEA agents in California to deny medicine to patients dying of cancer, as if their smoking a joint constituted a threat to national security.

    The Bush administration also seeks to give government agents the right to eavesdrop on conversations between "suspected terrorists" and their attorneys, thereby suspending the Sixth Amendment, which protects the right of a lawyer and a client to engage in confidential discussions. "Suspected terrorists" is an undefined term that could be applied to anyone unhappy with a government policy. The delicate balance between liberty and risk is mocked by such absurd proposals.

    The time has come to understand that the Republicans in Congress and in the White House, bought by corporate campaign contributions and other largess, have sought coldly and with malice to widen a schism that existed in America before September 11.They have embarked on a campaign that to the naked eye has the makings of a disastrous class war. They make it perfectly clear that they mean business, and the situation will only worsen when the avenues of dissent, one by one, are cut off.

    Consider also the fragility of hard-won reproductive freedom in the United States. A woman's fundamental right to prevent the government from controlling what she may do with her body is imperiled. This administration is unremittingly hostile to freedom of choice. It awaits only the opportunity to appoint one or two Supreme Court justices to overturn Roe v. Wade, a decision that has been under attack, primarily by American religious fundamentalists, since it was passed in 1973. Even now, four Supreme Court justices need to persuade only one of the remaining justices to join them and return the nation to the dark ages of back-alley abortions.

    President Bush has been forthright in declaring that, given the opportunity, he would appoint justices to the Supreme Court like Antonio Scalia and Clarence Thomas. We would be fools if we did not believe that he would attempt to fulfill that oft-repeated promise.

    After the victory of the United States in the Persian Gulf War, then-Secretary of State James Baker reminisced at a gathering of the faithful.

    "After Desert Storm," he recalled, "who could not be moved by the sight of that poor, demoralized rabble—outwitted, outflanked, outmaneuvered by the U.S. military. But, I think, given time, the press will bounce back."

    The joke, greeted by loud laughter, had more than the usual amount of truth in it. It underlined the fact that the military had succeeded in neutering the watchdogs of the American news media. The Pentagon, stung by its military defeat in Vietnam after years of lies to the American public—documented for all to see in the Pentagon Papers, the confessions of the perpetrators and facts recently disclosed—heavily censored coverage of the war against Iraq. The meek protests from the corporate newspapers, magazines and broadcasters were ignored as the Pentagon formed rear-echelon "pools" to feed reports to the correspondents. The lapdog networks whined before lying down.

    Thus we are told, in this time when jingoism sometimes passes for true patriotism, that "the first war of the twenty-first century" is "a different kind of war." It is a war in which even fewer American correspondents are allowed to cover frontline actions. Pentagon orders prohibit journalists from accompanying troops. The controls put on coverage of the Gulf War and the subsequent invasions of Panama and Grenada are now magnified and solidified. Military and government authorities openly regard a free and uncontrolled press as a menace. They seek cheerleaders, not professional reporting and critical analysis.

    They have taken advantage of the national crisis to achieve censorship of the news media, encourage self-censorship by the news media and promote the insidious concept that equates dissent with disloyalty. In hard-nosed phone calls to all of the television networks, Condoleezza Rice had the effrontery to suggest that reports from Al Jazeera, the television station watched by millions of Arab viewers, should be withheld from the people of the United States. Osama bin Laden, this bunch in the White House tells us with a straight face, may actually be sending secret instructions to his followers, as if he lacked other avenues to reach them.

    Media control is so much easier now for the government than it was in the old days, when most of those who owned newspapers, magazines and broadcast networks were far more sensitive to their journalistic and public service responsibilities. In wartime they insisted on serving the citizens of the United States by reporting from the front lines.

    This is also a time of crisis for a free and independent press. Media mergers, especially in the last 20 years, have enormously expanded the power of corporations that were in the entertainment business and had no experience in journalism. Their primary goal is not to fulfill the constitutional mission of the Fourth Estate but to increase profits for the benefit of executives and stockholders. The gaps in public understanding of the role of the press as a watchdog of government are frightening.

    Attorney General Ashcroft recently told the Justice Department to give federal agencies "great leeway to deny press requests for public information guaranteed under the Freedom of Information Act." Congress had passed the FOI Act in 1974 when the public was aroused by the half-truths and deliberate lies from government officials during the Vietnam war and Nixon's subsequent Watergate scandal. The FOI Act has come to be regarded as an essential check on government malfeasance. Yet Ashcroft's pronouncement drew hardly a peep of protest on the editorial pages of the nation's corporate daily press or a note of concern from the chattering heads on the multiple channels of the right-wing corporate networks.

    Add to that the failure of the news media to protest President Bush's executive order on November 1 restricting public access to his presidential papers and those of former presidents—including the record of his father. Three times he delayed release of Reagan's presidential papers—by law to be made public on January 20, 2001—before seizing the opportunity to issue an executive order in the wake of the September 11 attacks.This brazen executive reversal violates the Presidential Records Act passed by Congress in 1978, which provided for the release of papers 12 years after a president leaves office. The Bush administration, using the disgraced jargon of "national security concerns," reversed an act of Congress with an executive order that, if left unchallenged, eliminates forever any further investigation of the well-established scandals of the Reagan-Bush years.

    Several presidential historians have asserted publicly that the real concern of the White House is not national security but what the papers of President Reagan would reveal about not only his administration but also about the officials who form the inner circle of the current administration. The news media glossed over an executive act that violates both the law and the spirit of a free society. And where is the call for a timorous Congress to protect the people's right to know not only what their government is doing but also what their government has done?

    Fittingly, Henry Kissinger was the person chosen to deliver the first eulogy in a parade of celebrities at the funeral services a few months ago for Katharine Graham.

    The man who three decades earlier had called the publication of the Pentagon Papers "treasonable" stood unashamedly in the National Cathedral to hail the late Washington Post publisher as "a seminal figure in the battle to submit even the highest officials to ethical and judicial norms." Then, unmarked by America's corporate news media,the former secretary of state uttered an extraordinary proposition:

    "The Kay of the permanent establishment," he said, "never lost sight of the fact that societies thrive not only by the victories of their factions but by their ultimate reconciliations."

    This proud proclamation by a principal figure of the self-proclaimed "permanent establishment" confirms what for so long has been obvious but nonetheless vigorously denied by those in power. Contrary to Kissinger's view, societies do not thrive when governed by a cabal protected by those who control the channels of information. That is the path to totalitarianism. And this public assertion comes from a man perilously close to being indicted in several countries for war crimes and who recently had to flee Paris in a hurry to avoid the wheels of justice grinding at his heels.

    The same Katharine Graham extravagantly eulogized by members of the permanent establishment delivered a speech at CIA headquarters in 1988. In it she clearly expressed her belief in secret government and described the prerogratives of publishers in these words:

    "We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets, and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows."

    These beliefs, widely held by many in the legislative, executive and judicial branches of our government today, are shared by others in the corporations that control the major sources of news and opinion. Media mergers, especially in last 20 years, have resulted in the conquest of news networks by corporations mainly experienced in the entertainment function of television.

    Other right-wing corporations control chains of newspapers and magazines that limit the areas of public discussion and dissent. President Eisenhower's inspired warning, on his departure from the presidency in 1960, against the powers of the military-industrial complex has been expanded into the even more dangerous military-industrial- government-communications complex.

    A chill wind blows from Washington. The messages of concern come increasingly from sites on the Internet, in the pages of publications termed "alternatives" to the mainstream press, and even now and then from niches of the corporate media itself.

    I am approaching my 80th birthday. Many friends have questioned why I continue to devote so much time and energy in the last decades of my life to warning of our nation's drift toward an authoritarian state. Burned into me on the front lines of World War II in Europe were two dominant influences on my life: the depth of courage shared by so many young men to preserve our freedoms and a bitter hatred of the tenets and practices of Nazism.

    I had experienced the stench of totalitarianism and I caught another whiff of it when the shameless ballyhoo boys in the White House chose to name our new Gestapo the "White House Office of Homeland Security." The word "Homeland," rarely used by Americans until 1997, brought back memories of the "Fatherland" of Nazi Germany and the "Motherland" of Communist Russia.

    The White House agency was created by executive order, without approval of Congress and without Senate confirmation of the man chosen to head it. And then the president, a member of a family whose repeated transgressions of the law are almost beyond belief, has the gall to advise us that "You can trust this administration."

    As a child in Denver during the Great Depression that threatened to destroy the foundation of our nation, I vividly remember sitting on the front porch of my home on West Colfax Avenue and watching the procession of Fords filled with white-sheeted members of the Ku Klux Klan on their way to burn a cross on Coors Mountain. At the dinner table in my house I learned of the injustices inflicted by the Espionage Act of 1917 on Americans of German descent and those sincerely opposed to the Great War, and then the subsequent manufactured "red scare" and the infamous "Palmer Raids."

    Before going off to war myself, I watched helplessly as more than 110,000 men, women and children of Japanese descent, most of them American citizens, were sent to what we avoided calling concentration camps. I came to loathe the bigoted and benighted House Unamerican Activities Committee of the 40s, the McCarthyism of the 50s, and the surveillance and harassment of American citizens expressing their free speech rights in opposition to the war in Vietnam. None among us should forget the Nixon administration's use of the FBI in the infamous COINTELPRO operation, now being employed as a blueprint for current inquisitions.

    As a student of history and a professor teaching history, I delved into the darkest periods Americans had suffered under their government, starting with the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 that targeted anyone who criticized the government. For more than 40 years, ever since two foreign assignments for the U.S. State Department in the early 60s, I have openly questioned and opposed rogue operations of the CIA and other aspects of American foreign policy that later proved disastrous. The lesson of history that many Americans never seem to learn is that the citizens of our nation have inevitably come to regret the ill-advised actions taken by government in the name of "national security."